Alex. Day Sixteen - 4:23

My head is no longer on my shoulders and the whole world's been attached to a precarious and dodgy carousel. I feel drunk; I think maybe I am drunk, but I don't remember any alcohol. In fact, I don't remember anything.

I just remember how red is my favourite colour and how blue goes well with red to make purple. But this isn't an art class; this is a lesson in swallowing an entire bottle and it's rather apparent that I've passed with flying colours. Two flying colours; blue and red - to make purple. Purple is a pretty colour, isn't it? It reminds me of Jack, though, because Jack is pretty and I can't think about Jack now.

I need to get rid of the purple; to get rid of Jack. I take yellow. It's a horrible brown colour, one that reminds me of nothing but the end but I'm certain that's all that I need now.

The first one is weird. Bitter and flaky - it almost feels off, but I swallow the goddamn thing dry to spite my cold feet. And then comes the second; the second is easier, and so is the third, and the fourth, and by the time the bottle is half empty I feel like I'm eating a packet of skittles and not a mysterious bottle of unnamed yellow pills.

The empty bottle slips between my fingers and lands on the floor with a satisfyingly loud pop. I need to feel something; I think I've taken sleeping pills, because I'm so drowsy that my limbs want to slowly draft away from my body like particles in space.

I take a fourth type - I take the white ones. I know these ones keep you alert, by the fact that I have never used them in kidnapping someone before. I pour the entirety of the 100g bottle onto my tongue without thought. I stop myself from regretting my decision, even when my tongue metaphorically ignites itself and silently begs to be chopped off. I inhale one deep, final breath and push my tongue back, sending the dozens of capsules down the back of my throat.

And then I can't breathe, and it's not even a momentary thing. My windpipe is slowly closing in upon itself as if a tidal wave of salt water slithered down my throat, the salt eroding the fleshy walls and the water drowning whatever little supply of oxygen is left within my lungs.

I take deep breaths; I can get rid of carbon dioxide easily, without a second thought, and rather ironically, like breathing. But the oxygen won't come in; just more salt water, and the dryness on the back of my tongue.

I need to breathe.

Despite what this looks like... it isn't a suicide attempt, merely a home surgery with the medicine that lives in little coloured coded bottles. And despite what Jack thinks, I don't want to die. I just want this weak side of me to die, and it's a stubborn side, so it looks like it really is dragging me down with it.

I can't stop it now; I'm helpless, of course. It's pathetic, of course. Everything's obvious, of course. I'm going to die, of course.

I find myself letting out a breathless chuckle, because somehow this situation is managing to amuse my sadistic sense of humour.

I'm going to die.

It's funny, because God did finally outwit me at the last moment; I guess that I'm not so naively clever after all.

Aren't we all just amusing, though? This sentience... it means nothing; it's like the breeze on a winter morning. People fantasize and over romanticise the hell out of it, but we could live without it a heartbeat, and a lot of the time we do indeed go without it, but we're all too naïve and stuck up to notice. And the ones who know, are far too stubborn, far too pretentious, to even fathom letting the thought of pointing out the obvious mistake.

I know I'm going to die, so I make a scene out of it. I go out with a bang, and I grab a box of matches, some green pills, and the can of gasoline I keep under the kitchen sink.

I unscrew the lid of the gasoline can and through the liquid across the walls, the kitchen, furniture, everything and as it's dripping down from the ceiling like some sort of methane rainstorm, I look at the few millimetres of liquid left in the can and I don't even think before pouring it over myself.

I grin with the insanity inside of me, which is only worsened by the pungent gasoline fumes. I feel alive, even in my dying moments; I want to be a sparkler, and a stubborn one like that - a sparkler that wants to be the king of the firework show.

I swallow the green pills next; I swallow them to fast to put a name to the taste. My head's spinning immediately from a combination of mismatched and unprescribed medication and a whole gas station work of gasoline fumes.

I grab the matches in my last remaining seconds of consciousness. I strike one into flame, looking at the pretty little sparked wonder in my last few conscious seconds, my eyelids drooping down as I let out a strangely peaceful sigh.

I was strangely happy, even as my knees let out, my legs too, my bottling toppling onto a gasoline flooded floor, my head colliding brutally with the marble tiling, pulling me away for good.

And as a trail of blood leaks from my cranium, the match tumbles from my relaxed grip, landing centimetres away, amidst a clot of gasoline.

And then nothing smells of gasoline anymore, then everything smells of burning, of singeing, of roaring flames, of tunnels of smoke, and choking ashes - it smells of fire. And then, before I can even respond, I can't smell anything at all.

Good night.

-

Jack. Day Sixteen - 5:01

I found myself waking up far too early and hating it entirely. Glancing over at the red LED numbers on my unset alarm clock, I made out the faint figures that signalled the time being far too early. Five am was barely even morning in my books, let alone a suitable time to wake up at, but some people came from corners of insanity that I couldn't just comprehend.

I shrugged it off, pushing me eyes shut again and willing myself back to sleep, but try as I might, I just couldn't; my stomach couldn't settle and I couldn't pinpoint it for the life of me, but something just didn't seem right. Then again, this whole ordeal with Alex must have fucked up my nervous system, leading me to find suspicion and panic in just about everything on this goddamn earth.

I sighed, hating my sleeplessness at times, and sat up, turning on the light, to see my laptop curled up to me, burning away its little processor unnecessarily for hours on end. I opened it up, seeing that I had fallen asleep as I was talking to Cassadee. I kind of felt guilty at first, but I shrugged it off - she was nice, she'd understand, and anyway, my beauty sleep was important. Being a girl she'd understand that shit, wouldn't she? Or at least I damn well hoped so, because it was five am.

I saw that there was one unread message; she was probably asleep now, so I didn't want to wake her with the notification sound of a reply, but I read the message nonetheless. I'd reply to it at seven. Well, actually I'd probably forget so maybe it was better to do so now, but I didn't want to take my chances with waking up and potentially pissing off and upsetting my only friend besides Alex, my only friend outside of this house.

Although, I had grown accustomed to not particularly minding being with Alex, in Alex's house 24/7, the last two weeks had been kind of weird, kind of lonely and almost insanity spawning, but Cassadee definitely helped. Cassadee just brought hope into my life in a little beacon of laptop screen light of sanity.

It wasn't conventional to say the least, but actually none of this was conventional - what was conventional about the fact that your boyfriend was originally your kidnapper and could have quite possibly been your murderer? Yeah...

I found myself thinking about Joe, wondering as to when he would have even noticed that his little brother was missing. Maybe he still hadn't. Maybe he'd assumed that I just fucked off elsewhere and that I hadn't been kidnapped and nearly murdered. But none of that mattered anymore; he didn't matter - Alex mattered and I was sure that Alex and Alex alone was all I needed to keep me sane.

I opened up the last message she'd sent me, which was at roughly one am. I was nervous to see whether she'd be pissed at me for not replying, but I doubted she would have because Cass is generally a nice girl, but you never know because some people really do turn into monsters at night. Or maybe the monsters from under the bed just crawl out and take them over.

Cassadee: Lisa is a total bitch though, you're lucky that your best friend isn't anything like her. She's going on about how she got it on with some guy today, and she doesn't even care what I have to say, that I kissed this pretty sweet dude, but no she doesn't care, because she's selfish and she cares about her fucked up little make out session. I hate her sometimes, dear god.

I had to chuckle a little at that. I was clueless when it came to girl drama, but anyone could put two and two together and figure out that this Lisa was a total bitch and really I was awfully lucky to have Alex, even if he had insisted upon sleeping in his own room tonight. I found it suspicious, but whatever. Alex was just acting weird lately in all.

I mean weirder than normal of course... he just kind of seemed distant when usually he couldn't keep his hands off of me in any, every and whatever way he say fit at that certain time. I didn't mind now, because there was this little matter that I found myself entirely in love with Alex Gaskarth. It was bittersweet, and addictive, and downright deadly down to the fucking literal meaning.

As I went to check my other emails, I noticed a word document on the desktop that I definitely hadn't put there. I squinted at it with curiosity and began to wonder if I had gotten a virus or something - Alex wouldn't be happy with that. Alex would shout for sure and probably take the damn laptop right off me, cutting my contact with Cassadee entirely.

I couldn't even explain to her what happened - we'd just never speak again, let alone explain to my sanity how to cope. Alex was special and cute - he meant a lot of me, of course, but you know, Cassadee was like my lifeline, the lighthouse in the dark, and Alex was just another boat being dragged down in the depths with me.

The file was named 'Don't Open Until It's Morning'. I just looked at it in confusion - had I done some semi unconscious late night poetry or something? Even if I had, I doubted I could use an apostrophe correctly with a state of half consciousness.

Then again, I hadn't previously assessed my grammatical ability within a sleep deprived state, so you never know. I could have just made a William Wordsworth masterpiece within the early hours of the morning and I was just about to have my mind blown by the nocturnal artistic genius that I didn't know even resided in me.

Five am was morning anyway, well technically. So I doubled clicked and watched as the mystery file opened in Word, taking far too long to load entirely. Which made me suspect further that this was a virus, currently downloading tons of adware and spyware ready to steal passwords that I didn't have to accounts that I didn't even own. I kind of felt sorry for the spyware.

I was surprised and actually awfully relieved to find the file that opened to be not a virus and nothing more than a normal text file, however that in no way did anything about the possibility that this word file could be infinitely worse.

My eyes were met with barely any text; just a few lines, but it was what lay within those lines that mattered so much more than how many lines there were. That was for certain.

Hey Jacky x

Don't go in the kitchen. Call the number below and just don't go in the kitchen. It's the number a friend - he'll sort everything out.

Alex

Below was a cell number before that I barely managed to scan over before my head was hit with a tidal wave of confusion. I could barely breathe as I tried to string together the typed words into something that made the slightest bit of sense in my head. I read them over again; first in my words and then I imagined the words coming from Alex's lips.

Don't go in the kitchen.

The words hung in my ears as I grabbed my cell phone, dialling the number, punching the digits into the machine in almost slow motion. My whole world felt like it was stopping entirely and all because of one stupid fucking note that was causing my head to spin like crazy and leave me to look at this fucking rut which I'd found myself directly stuck in.

The dialling tone was both entirely too long and both entirely too short. But the inevitable occurred and the dialling static was replaced by the gravelly voice of a man who was rather pissed off in the fact that he'd woken up to take this phone call.

I shouldn't have called - I knew I shouldn't have, but I was shit scared otherwise and I really couldn't just leave this. And if I didn't call, my only other option would be to directly disobey Alex's orders and to go into the kitchen. And fuck knows what I'd find- fuck... had he killed someone?

Was there a corpse lying on our kitchen counters as he chopped it up and possibly put little chunks of it into re-sealable freezer bags- No, Alex wasn't a cannibal. He was sane, or at least as sane as a serial killer could be, which admittedly isn't very sane, but he's Alex. He's different and most of all, I trust him.

"Flyzik speaking. Make it quick - what the fuck do you want?" I found myself shivering at little and simply just at the harshness of his voice. This was not the kind of guy I wanted to have a conversation with by any means.

"Uhh... Uhh... I-Uhh-" I stumbled over my words as I wondered how on earth I could possibly verbalise the situation at hand when I didn't have the slightest clue as to what the fuck was going on myself.

"Listen here, kid, you woke me up at 5am so you better make it fucking worth my time - calls are fucking traceable you know, kid." This guy was not one I ever wanted to come into contact with but considering Alex's apparent acquaintancy with him, I doubted things would go at all in my favourite.

"I uhh... Alex told me to call this number." I pushed out the least insightful piece of drivel I could muster, but one that just about adequately covered the situation, so I guess it'd have to do.

"Gaskarth?" He sounded surprised, as if some dorky loser kid like me could possibly be anyway associated with someone like Alex Gaskarth, but then again things did end up working out weird didn't they?

"Yeah, Alex Gaskarth." I confirmed, the words coming easier now, once he'd stopped yelling at me and was guiding the conversation with the certainly more civilised form of mild interrogation.

"How the fuck does a kid like you know Gaskarth - tell me another one, kid." Well, I guess I spoke too soon.

"He's my boyfriend-"

"I didn't mean literally." My heart deflated like a fucking balloon, but then again, I soon found myself wondering as to why I even cared about this asshole's opinion in the first place.

"Seriously, he left me a note. He said: Don't go in the kitchen. Call the number below and just don't go in the kitchen. It's the number a friend - he'll sort everything out. I called the number."

He sighed, clearly even more pissed off than he'd been previously, which couldn't be good. "Fucking hell, Gaskarth." He muttered to himself. "Have you gone in the kitchen?"

"No." I said truthfully.

"Good - don't." I nodded, despite the fact he couldn't see me - I looked like an idiot, but I stress the point that really there was no one to see me. "What's your name, kid?"

"Jack."

"I'm Matt Flyzik. I'm coming over now - don't bother opening the door - I have a key. I'll sort this shit out, probably slap Gaskarth a little too for being such a bitch- Hey kid, where actually are you?"

"I'm in my bedroom, it's the first on the left upstairs-" I began to explain before his arrogant tone cut me off.

"Yeah, yeah - I know. I'll come get you once I've sorted him out, whatever the fuck he's done now-"

"What do you mean-"

"Gaskarth isn't that mentally okay, you know. He's damn insane; I thought you could have guessed that by now." Those words hurt, because Alex was okay... Alex was getting better at the very least, or so I thought at the very least, but I guess that kind of counts for nothing now.

"Mmm..." I sighed.

"Look, kid - it'll be alright." He sounded as if he was lying, which he probably was. "I'll come get you okay. It won't be long, but kid, remember - do not go in the kitchen."

And then the line went dead.

And those words raced around my head for far too long entirely: Don't go in the kitchen.

And the more they rang through my head, the more I wanted to.

I read his note through once more.

Call the number below and just don't go in the kitchen.

Just don't.

I knew I shouldn't - I damn right knew I should never consider it, and I knew it was a direct order from Alex.

So, I did.

I went in the kitchen and regretted it instantly.

When There's Nothing Left To Burn, You Have To Set Yourself On Fire

Hey guys:) I hoped you enjoyed that chapter even if you want to kill me a little bit now;) Comments and votes are appreciated as always and I love you all<3